It has taken a bit but I’ve all but switched to Google Chrome for my browser especially as more and more extensions become available.

One extension that I’ve found extremely useful is Awesome Screenshot. When working with members of our school community, I often need to quickly snap a screenshot and annotate it with notes, directions, questions, or important points. This tool makes that process extremely easy.

To the left is an example of quickly annotating some of the features within Flickr, which I really like a lit.

Process (after plugin is installed)

1. Click on the Awesome Screenshot icon and select either “Capture Visible

2. Part of Page” or “Capture Entire Page”
3. A new tabe will appear that allows you to annotate the page using various tools: text, shapes, lines, arrows, and cropping.
4. Once you finishing annotating, click done and you can save your image

Easy enough, right?

Sharing

The one piece that is not fully functional is sharing. At this point, it is pretty much limited to saving the file locally and distributing from there. However, it looks as though Diigo is developing a share feature that will undoubtedly carry with it the usual suspect: share to Twitter, Flickr, Diigo, etc. This is a much needed feature that I look forward to seeing.

If you are like me and use screenshots on what seems to be a daily basis, take a look at Awesome Screenshot. Let me know what you think.

Last year during Leadership Day 2009, I talked about the need for Different Leader. The thoughts in this post still require much work in schools today, and this year’s post builds upon it by providing a practical idea for becoming a Different Leader.

On this Leadership Day 2010, I issue this challenge to school leaders: walk in the shoes of your students for a day.

Seriously. Open your calendar now and secure a day during the year where your administrative team can experience first-hand what it is like to be a learner in the school community and what teaching and learning really looks like from the eyes of your students: classroom experience, halls, lockers, homework, extracurricular, polices, teaching, learning, engagement, school goals, school vision, etc.

Is this time-consuming? Yes. However, the question is better situated from a value-add perspective.

The Lived Experience

The study of this generation of students is amassing at quite a rate. With boyd and Ito doing amazing work about the culture of the generation of students, we are getting glimpses into their lived experiences.

These studies such as the recent Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out offer much to our understanding of students. However, school leaders need to localize that understanding beyond just the scope of social media. One way to do this is by walking in the shoes of student even for one day, so we can begin to see their culture, their lived experience in a way that enhances our lens.

After all, the creation of our paths shaped by the decisions we make as leaders are in the best interest of students, learning, and community. How can we create such paths without having the best possibile understanding of our students and their experiences within and outside our school community?

Process

1. Select at least one date during the first few weeks of school that you will spend the day following a student schedule
2. Discuss with local union the goal of this is to better understand the lived experience of our students to help with discussions, decisions, and goals
3. Select one student for the day to shadow and meet with that student to discuss what you are doing (be sure the admin team works to diversify their selection to experience the diversity of the student population)
4. The day before you walk with the student, obtain the homework and assignments from the class before  as well as any extracurricular items so that you better understand the context for the day
5. Meet with the student first thing in the morning and begin your day: leave behind any and all devices the students are NOT allowed to use. IT IS IMPERATIVE that you follow the policies and “rules” students must follow.
6. During the process, engage as a student but also observe and take note of the experience.
7. After school, engage in the school activities, if applicable, of that student.
8. After school, complete the homework assignments from the classes.
9. Reflect on the experience noting themes, questions, surprises, positives, and challenges
10. As a leadership team, share experiences and collect common themes. Distribute a synopsis of the day to faculty and various committees for discussion
11. As a school, use these experiences to further explore whether your school’s beliefs and philosophies are aligned with policies and practices. Use these experiences to further define goals, paths, and visions. Use these experiences to further clarify how people learn, what is engagement, and what it means to be well-educated in today’s society in order to inform curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

The experiences and voices of our students simply cannot be ignored. They bring valuable insights and an exciting perspective that can shape how we shape education together. Our lens can no longer afford to be based upon our perceptions and past experiences. This is a but one small way to bring clarity to that lens.

Image

cc licensed flickr photo by smoorenburg: http://flickr.com/photos/smoorenburg/3275789442/

Reading the potential classes for my fall semester this evening, I was reminded about how horrible this must be for students in high school.

For me, I am able to see the professor and with a little research, know their beliefs on learning, their approach to teaching, and their structure of the learning environment. From there, I am able to align how I learn best as well as work to diversify my perspective. For our students, they get none of that.

Sure, they know the teachers of the class they are attempting to take but there isn’t much choice of who they get. It is select the course and you are placed into a section by the luck of the draw. There is, to my knowledge, little consideration or empowerment given to students in the selection of the teachers they feel is best suited to their needs.

So, here is the thing. Why are we resisting students that want a specific teacher? Why are we not transparent in who is teaching the course section and that teacher’s beliefs on learning? What would happen, positives and challenges, if we structured our registration not only around courses but around the types of learning environments within various sections of those courses?

A Simple Example

At the sake of oversimplifying this process, here is just that: an oversimplified example that simply tells the students the learning philosophy that drives the section of English I.

English I*
Blah Blah Blah

Section One: Constructivist
Section Two: Behaviorialist
Section Three: Connectivism
Section Four: Cognitivist

Would this provide better opportunities for students? Would this empower students a bit more and create better learning environments for all involved? I think so.

Sure. There are risks and maybe this idea is simply way off based, but it seems we spend more time hiding aspects in the registration process than aligning students with the classrooms and subjects that best serve their individual growth.

I’m curious to know how transparent your process and how much choice do students have especially within the “core” curriculum.

Again, we talk a lot about empowering students, growing their thinking, and engaging their voices. However, do our practices aligns with our stated beliefs? Student registration is one of those that has me wondering…

*This obviously assumes we help students to understand these and that we accurately identify individual teacher’s belief systems on learning that inform pedagogy and the classroom environment.

Image
cc licensed flickr photo by ktpupp: http://flickr.com/photos/ktpupp/454927792/

“It’s these changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes
Nothing remains quite the same
With all of our running and all of our cunning
If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane”

Jimmy’s (yes, I feel like we are on a first name basis though the courts disagree) words Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes hung on the wall of our classroom and represented my take on teaching and learning.

Students often wanted to know what it meant though I would answer “it is better you see than I tell”. By the end of our time together, it was clear why I lived by those words in my approach to teaching.

My principal had a clear understanding of it, too. She knew my beliefs about learning and how teens learn. She understood why my instructional and assessment practices were tied directly to those beliefs. She challenged me to continue triangulating learning theory, motivation theory, and assessment theory to change as a teacher, to inform my pedagogy.

She explored and challenged my beliefs about how people learn (as well as our entire faculty) and how this informed my pedagogy. This, in turn, personalized my growth and impacted both the learning environment and my practices.

She understood professional development could not focus on instruction disconnected from learning. She knew that too often professional development attempted to enhance or change instructional practice without changing perspectives on how people learn.

Little did I know she was unique in that regard.

Our Lens

This is why I’ve been studying and engaging in research on how professional development is done compared to her approach (understand how people learn and what is motivation in efforts to understand how this informs professional development for enhanced pedagogy). What has been abundantly clear is our almost obsessive focus in professional development that jumps directly to instruction without considering foundations of learning and motivation, without considering the diverse perspectives, beliefs, and values of the teachers.

How do people learn? Does this generation of students learn and approach learning differently than past generations? What does it mean and look like to be engaged for learning? How are we considering motivation in the design of our learning environment? How are we taking into account learning theory and student motivation when designing and reviewing assessments for learning? How are your perspectives on these questions informing pedagogy?

I’m often asked about how do we get teachers to change their instructional practices, buy-in to systemic ideas, adopt technology, and other notions of “change”.

We know the whole concept of change is enough to send many into a state of paralysis:

“We did this twenty years ago and I hated it then. Now it’s back and you expect me to do what?”
“LEAVE ME ALONE! We’re doing fine!”
“This is just a fad… by the way, my ditto machine is broken. Can you fix it?”
“Learning communities? Why don’t you call it what it is — a meaningless meeting”
“I’ll just close my door!”
“You want me to do what?”
“So help me… if you say Vision, just turn around and run… run as fast as you can.”

This utter fear of and resistance to change use to frustrate me to no end until I began to take note of our lens, a lens that sees everyone sharing the same beliefs about how people learn so the instructional strategy or learning space should be clear.

The reality is that these instructional strategies do not always match a teacher’s belief about how people learn, which leads to one of two things in my observations:

1. The teacher resists and does not progress no matter the degree of professional development.
2. The teacher feels pressure to adopt and does so by radically modifying it to fit within their framework of how people learn (thus, depreciating the value of the strategy tremendously)

There is no better way to look at this then with web 2.0 and social media. There are many great PD programs working to enhance the learning environment with these technologies.

Yet, much of what we see with social and networked media is rooted in a belief system about learning: constructivism, social constructivism, or connectivism.

For teachers with pedagogy rooted in these beliefs on learning, professional development and change is not as challenging. It seems a natural fit. It just makes sense.

But what about those who belief students learn differently than what constructivist or connectivist believe? How are we exploring their beliefs systems to help make sense of the afforded by social and networked media?

A theme emerging from a small research piece that I’ve done is that without a focus on how people learn, no professional development model will succeed with the educators whose belief system on learning is not rooted in one of the three aforementioned theories.

So, What are You Saying?

I’m becoming more convinced that we have to understand and help teachers to understand their beliefs about learning.  After all, our beliefs about how people learn inform our practice, our pedagogy. When we fail to address the former, we will never alter the latter. In other words, we have to change the attitude that prevail about how people learn before we can change the direction of how teachers are getting there.

If we don’t, we’ll continue to accept that it is okay to only focus on the innovators. We’ll be okay with labels such as innovator and laggards. We’ll be okay with haves and have nots. We’ll be okay with some students having better opportunities than others.

As a leader, I can’t accept any of those.

There is much to clean up and much research to be done here so criticism, questions, challenges, and concerns as always are welcome.

This post was cross-posted on Education Week’s Leader Talk

cc licensed flickr photo by Today is a good day: http://flickr.com/photos/good_day/59482378/

The need for schools to foster teacher leadership is no secret and offers great opportunity for school success (Crowther, Ferguson, Hann, 2008). When we look up and down the hallways, those leaders exist if we just open their doors and their minds to something greater: “All teachers have the capacity to lead their schools down a more positive path, to enlist their abundant experience and craft knowledge in the service of school improvement” (Barth, 2001, pg 444).

However, when teacher leadership is not cultivated, the entire culture suffers from untapped voices, promoted isolation, and valued top-down hierarchy.

So I continue to think that the critical first step towards teacher leadership (beyond being an effective educator) is for teachers to think beyond their classroom, their students, their lens, and their needs.

When teachers begin to think systemically and from multiple lenses without egocentric drive, teacher leadership is possible. Without it, their world remains a one-room school house  incapable of leadership.

Two months ago, I received an email from a former student now a teacher. She simply said “Hi Mr. Bretag! I just want you to know that I am a teacher and I had the desk removed from our classroom”.

During the past month, I had a former student now in her graduate program at the same university I attend walk by a classroom where she saw me teaching. I didn’t see her but was devastated when she sent me a thought via Facebook about seeing me teaching behind a desk and podium in the room (I was showing Direct Instruction and challenging teacher about its place – long story). When I responded, she laughed and knew that it wasn’t there by choice.

These two events brought me back to an important decision I made at the end of my first year of teaching.

Take a walk into a classroom and ask yourself if our beliefs about teaching and learning inform our use of that space. I can’t tell you how uncomfortable it makes me feel when I enter a classroom where there are 30+ individual student desks facing the front where a large teacher desk and podium stare over the top of everyone.

It sets an immediate tone of perceived control, order, and linear thinking governed by the teacher. Yes, maybe the students don’t outwardly say anything. Why would they? They have been programmed to see this as normal; their minds see nothing else but the traditional classroom space.

I simply cannot accept that our beliefs and philosophy are too often not aligned to the spaces our students spend 8+ hours a day for 12 years. It is why I asked for the teacher desk and podium to be removed from my classroom.

Saying Goodbye to a Teacher-Centered Symbol

My first year, I put my desk in the back corner to try and remove this the teacher-centered values . However, I found it only removed part of the mindset inherent in the symbol leaving a major part in place: a my space/your space concept of the learning environment. I was not a part of the community.

Our interactions and the learning-centered approach to our community overshadowed this initial tone, and I never heard a word about it from students. But I didn’t like. I didn’t think it created the environment that fostered community nor did it align with my beliefs and philosophy.

So, I got rid of it. My principal was shocked. My department chair said I was overthinking it. My colleagues just laughed at the “rookie”. But I went desk-free for my entire teaching career because it supported the beliefs and philosophy I claimed to live by.

Day in and Day out, I sat with the students as a learner and teacher — exactly what I expected from them and they expected of me. There was no front. There was no central figure. There were no symbols in the classroom that said one thing while my actions and speech said another.

Year after year, students commented on how much that meant to them and added to the feel of the classroom. Year after year, students inquired at the beginning of the year about where was my desk and where was the front of the room – both questions led to a great discussion about teacher, learner, and community.

What symbols exist in your space, your school that do not align to your beliefs and philosophies about teaching and learning? What are you doing to turn those into spaces better aligned to a learner-centered environment?

cc licensed flickr photo by pmarkham: http://flickr.com/photos/pmarkham/2469390439/

The professional development and student design space in our building is fast approaching completion, and we are exploring names for it.

With all the creativity that goes into the design and philosophy of a space, it is time to finalize  a name. As we know, language and words bring forth perceptions so it is imperative to ensure the name reinforces the direction of the space.

That is why the original conceptual name 21^st Century Learning and Teaching Space no longer makes complete sense, probably never did for a name as it served more as a context for discussion. In many ways, it reeks of educational technology and that isn’t the direction of the space – this is a space for learning.

While I like Bretag’s Bed and Breakfast, I’m not sure the egocentric nature of it being my space works for anyone but me.

So, we have three phases for naming. Phase I is a toss out digitally to everyone and anyone vote on our conservative names. Phase II is a toss out of digitally to everyone and anyone vote on our creative names. Phase III is to take the top 2-3 from each of the conservative and creative lists and have  our school community only (they are included in Phase I-II) recommend a name from a list or in the Other.

We’ll then have the name, a small but important piece that helps paint the picture of learning, innovation, collaboration, and change.  Please join us! We’d love to have your feedback.

There are a lot of claims about this generation of students. From opening Facebook for classroom use to heavy student centered classrooms, ideas flow from good intentioned adults about what our students want and what they need.

But, are these informed opinions stemming from discussions with a wide-range of students or informed ideas based on our own beliefs about teaching and learning?

Both have value but discussions with students can inform us of bias, of exaggerations, and of realities we are missing. They help us to see where our policies and practices are not aligned with our beliefs. Students bring another dimension of innovation to the discussion as a critical stakeholder in the community.

How frequently are you engaging in dialogue with your students about the teaching and learning taking place in the classroom? What types of discussions are taking place surrounding beliefs about generational traits? How about motivation? assessment? engagement?

Instructional technology is one area we simply cannot afford to make decisions based solely on our beliefs. There is too much focus on this generation of students that is media driven. There is too much focus on educational technology as the silver bullet that is creating a fractured perspective.

Discussion Starters

When I look at the upcoming year, there are three areas that I am excited about students pulling up a seat at the table to discuss our school

Curriculum Council
This past year, my Leadership and You student group worked on school action projects. One group focused on the need for students to be part of the curriculum council to bring their perspectives to teaching, learning, and assessing. Their proposal was warmly received and there will be a student group at this table! I believe their insights will forever change curriculum and instruction at our school for the better.

Student Instructional Technology Team
This group is being formed organically but it provides a critical voice to pilots, professional development, and evaluations of where we are and where we are going with instructional technology. This group will also serve as a presence in the new Center.

Open Discussions
Finally, I plan to engage deeply in discussion with students over a variety of topics, some new and some a continuation of past years (2009, 2008, 2007). Here is just a short list of my ten topics (with sample discussion pieces for the first three) for 2010-2011 that I will be exploring both formally (panels, student advisory, etc.) and informally (observations, class visits, informal space visits, and passing conversations).

1. Course Space (Moodle): This is a critical area I want to discuss with our students. We are well into our entering our 2nd full year of Moodle as our course space and the students have a variety of opinions on how effective it is for the learning environment. How effectively is this being utilized in the classroom setting? Is it enhancing your learning? How would you like to see teachers leveraging Moodle? What are ways teachers are utilizing Moodle that you would like to see stop? How much of Moodle is being used for information delivery versus student-centered activities? What would you like to see added to this piece of the multi-dimensional learning space?
2. Student Space (Google Apps): How is the space meeting 0r failing to meet our needs? How can students drive the use of social media through this space? How should we encourage teachers to use the student space in the physical and digital course space? Do we still see Facebook as something to keep separate from school?
3. Mobile Devices: How is the open mobile device policy enhancing the learning environment? How are you leveraging your mobile devices in formal spaces and informal spaces throughout the school? How can we better utilize mobile devices in our environment? Are there additional policies that need to be reviewed to enhance the utilization of mobile technologies for learning formal and informal?
4. Assessment and Homework
5. Teaching and Learning with Social Media
6. Student Instructional Technology Team
7. Physical Spaces
8. 1:1 Computing
9. How Does Your Generation Learn and Generational Traits?
10. Policies

What about you? Whether a teacher or administrator, what discussions will you be having with your students? What are items currently being discussed at your school that are being done because this is “the digital generation of digital natives” and are the students included? What committees could be enhanced with student voices?

If not, I highly suggest you stop and hear their thoughts. I guarantee they will surprise you and shed new insights into what can be done to enhance the learning environment.

Image Reference

How to Change Image by ecastro

The notion of delivering content is not one that creates images of an engaging classroom. While my belief is that content/curriculum should be discovered, shared, and uncovered, teachers do deliver content in varying degrees.

A question I posed nearly three years ago and continue to challenge educators with is this: how are you rethinking the delivery of content? How are we leveraging the physical classroom to become more collaborative, engaging, and human-centered leaving work outside of class for items that are more 1-way?How are we rethinking what happens in the physical given what is possible in the digital?

Essentially, this means reversing where things typically occur classroom and home. By rethinking the delivery of content, we can reallocate classroom time to inquiry, collaboration, projects, feedback, and learning with homework being reserved for 1-way content delivery where it is better suited.

There is little reason to spend class time focusing on 1-way teaching and learning or teacher-centered approaches when these could easily be accomplished in the digital space. In the classroom, students should connect with their peers both local and global, collaborate on problems and projects, explore ideas in proximity to the teacher, and engage in student-centered activities.

In my conversations with students, they would prefer this shift as it would provide them just-in time learning and feedback opportunities while also creating a more engaging learning environment. In their eyes, this is what technology affords us especially with mobile technologies making much of this readily accessible anywhere and at any time.

This opportunity for students to gain access to high levels of feedback within their learning and the paths they’ve selected in their learning is a critical step in learning. It helps to move towards deeper understanding and transfer of learning.

Isn’t it odd that we send students home to work in isolation on projects, writings, and challenges that would be better served in a collaborative, community centered classroom where feedback could be garnered throughout the process? After all, these student displays of learning are at the heart of the classroom. Why would we not want to observe the process of learning in the classroom instead of promoting it in isolation for homework?

Years ago, this was difficult. There were few options that allowed teacher to deliver their content outside of the physical classroom. Today, this is not the case and there is no excuse for content to reign supreme in classrooms. Podcasts, screencasts, videos, embedded slidedecks, and more all provide opportunities to completely rethink what happens in the classroom and what happens at home.

*UPDATE: Thank you to Anne Weaver for sharing this great resource of an educator, Jonathan Bergmann that is making this happen through a process he calls Pre-Vodcasting.

Is it time that we rethink the delivery of content in order to reallocate the physical class time on student-centered approaches and outside classroom time on reviewing content delivered by both teacher and students? Is it time to leverage technologies that allow the delivery of content to occur outside of the classroom so that classroom time is more engaging for students, more conducive to learning, and more flexible?

– I know this brings up the very notion of homework. This post addresses the reality that homework is currently a staple in many schools even though I am not a fan of it.

Image Streamlined Delivery Truck by The Rocketeer

It always amazes me how little we utilize the pathways in school buildings. Whether it is only seeing these as transition points from A to B or a mindset that sees learning tethered only to the classroom, this area is often neglected outside of a few token art pieces, an award here or there, and random announcements.

While there are certainly many things schools can do to convert these legacy spaces, one area I’m exploring for next year is really simple.

Take a quick look at the image to the left. Are you aware of what the strange box is and does? It is a mobile barcode called QR.

If you add an app to your iPhone or download the software for your mobile phone, you can scan and access the content embedded within the code: social networking links, RSS feeds, SMS, contact information, URLs, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc.

Give it a try! Once you have downloaded the app/software for your phone, open the app/software and scan the barcode to see what happens.

Learning Street Uses

There are surely plenty of uses but here are a few I’m considering within our school.

1. QR barcodes placed in high interest areas that are connected to Multimedia recordings to inform people about these places. For example, a QR barcode in our main entry near our alma mater song. When scanned, the fight song plays on the phone of the visitor, student, parent, community member, etc.
2. QR barcodes in knowledge/learning common areas that link students to additional resources.  For example, QR barcodes located in various areas of our academic resource center that link students to videos explaining the concept they are exploring or linking them directly to the online tutor sign-up.
3. QR barcodes at office entry points that serve as a digital business card. For example, a QR barcode next to the photo of our principal and two associate principals when you enter the main office. This barcode provides instant contact information.
4. QR barcodes at area entry points that serve as an introduction and digital connection. For example, a QR barcode upon entering the library that links the phone directly the virtual library.
5. QR barcodes during events that allow for enhanced interaction. For example, clubs could provide digital handouts and multi-media welcomes through the barcode during activities night. This would allow students and parents to quickly access information and store on their phone.
6. QR barcodes in social spaces and informal learning spots through the school that provide enhanced learning opportunities. For example, our All School workshop group could extend ideas by YouTube videos and podcasts.
7. QR barcodes in areas that often need troubleshooting. For example, our computer labs could have QR barcodes that instantly connect students to technical help desk.

This doesn’t even address how teachers can begin to leverage QR barcodes: virtual fieldtrips, scavenger hunts, virtual help and troubleshooting, homework codes, outside adventures, and much more. Just look at Laura Jacob’s great work with Mobile Zebra.

Building your own QR Code

What is really nice about this discussion is the ease in which these can be built.

1. Find a QR generator. There are plenty on the web though I’ve been using the following two most frequently: Delivr, Mobile Bar-Code, and Kaywa
2. Fill our the information and generate the barcode
3. Copy that to a handout, document, slidedeck, poster, etc.
4. Print and strategically place

Give it a try!

If you’ve done this, I’d love to hear about your experience. If you haven’t, let me know your thoughts on whether this makes sense for our learning streets or hallways if you prefer.